The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1887-12-02
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
An Interesting Discourse on ssThe
Gospel of Heslth.'
The Relation of Bodily HABITS and All
ments to the Spiritual COpd.tion of
the Individual, Words Of .garn~
ing to Young and Old.


ing to Young and Old.
The subject of a recent discourse by
] Rev. 7. Dewitt Talmage at the Brooklyn
/ Tabernacle was "The Gospel of Health -
/ His text was:
TIL dart strike through his sliver.-Proverbs,
vii, 23
| He said: There is a fashion in sermonics.
i A comparatively small part of the Bible
] is called on for texts. Most Of the passages
/ of Scripture, when announced at the
/ opening of sermons, Immediately divide
1 themselves into old discussions that we
/ have heard from boyhood, and the effect
on us is soporific. The auditor guesses at
the start just what the preacher will say.
| There are very important chapters and
| verses that have never been preached
! from. Much of my lifetime 1 am devot-
! ing to unlocking these gold chests and
blasting open these quarrtes. We talk
4 about the heart, and preach about the
/ heart, and sing about the heart, but if you
refer to the physical organ that we call
the heart, il has not half so much to do
! with spiritual health or disease, moral ex-
altation or spiritual depression, as the
organ to the consideration of which Solo
mon calls us in the text, when he describes
! sin progressing
| TIL dart strike through his liver.
Solomon's anatomical and physiological
discoveries were so very great, that he
was nearly three thousand years ahead of
| the scientists of his day. He, more than
one thousand years before Christ, seemed
to know about the circulation of the blood
which Harvey discovered ], ,619 years after
| Christ, for which Solomon, in Ecclesias4es,
| describing the human body, speaks of the
! pitcher at the fountain, he evidently
means the three canals leading from the
| heart that receives the blood like pitchers.
When he speaks in Ecclesiastes of the sill
yer cord of life, he evidently means the
| spinal marrow, about which In our days
Drs. Mayo, and Carpenter, and Dalton,
and Flint, and Brown-Sequard have ex-
perimented. And Solomon recorded in
the Bible thousands of years before scien-
fists discovered it, that in his time the
spinal cord relaxed in old age, producing
the tremors of hand and head: "Or the
silver cord be loosed."
In the text he reveals the fact that he
had studied that largest gland of the hui
man system, the liver, not by the electric
light of the modern dissecting- room, but
by the dim light of a comparatively dark
age, and yet had seen its important fun nc-
tion in the God-built castle of the human
body-its selecting and secreting power,
its curious cells, its elongated, branching
tubes, a divine workmanship in central
and right and left lobe, and the hepatic
artery, through which God conducts the
crimson tides. OH this vital organ is
like the eye of God, in that it never sleeps.
Solomon knew of it and had noticed,
either in vivisection or post-mortem, what
awful-attacks sin and dissipation make
upon it, until, with the fat of Almighty
! God, it bids the body and soul separate,
and the one it commands to the grave and
the other it sends to judgment. A javelin
a slight wounds but piercing it from side
to side,
Till the dart strike through the liver.
Galen and Hippocrates ascribe to the
| liver the most of the worlds moral depres-
sion, and the word melancholy means
black bile.
1 preach to you this morning the gospel
/ of health. In taking diagnosis of the dis
eases of the soul you must also take the
/ diagnosis Of the diseases Of the body. AS
! IL to recognize this, one whole book of the
/ New Testament was written by a phy-
! sician. Luke was a doctor, and he dis
courses much of physical effects, and he
/ tells us of the good Samaritan's medical
/ tion of the wounds by pouring In oil and
/ wine, and recognizes hunger as a him
! derance to hearing the Gospel, so that the
/ five thousand were fed; and records the
/ sparse diet of the prodigal away from
! uO&4ca anu bAC o@AtlA utsASA SJ OaA3AN VI
/ the beggar by the wayside, and let's us
| know of the hemorrhage OF the wounds Of
| the dying Christ and the miraculous post
mortem resuscitRtiOn. And any estimate
/ Of the spiritual condition that does not
/ include also estimate of tho physical
condition is incomplete.
When the doorkeeper OF Congress fell
dead from excessive Joy because Bur-
/ govne had surrendered at Saratoga, and
/ Philip the Fifth of Spain dropped dead
/ at the news of his eountry's defeat in
/ battle, and Cardinal Wolsey expired a
/ result of Henry the Eighth's anathema, It
was demonstrated that the body and soul
are Siamese twins, and when you thrill
/ the one with joy or sorrow you thrill the
/ other. We might as well recognize the
/ tremendous fact that there are two
+ mighty f0rtresses in the human body, the
heart and the liver; the heart the fortress
] of all graces, the liver the fortress Of all
the furies. You may have the head filed
with all intellectualites, and the ear with
all musical appreciation, and the mouth
with all eloquenee, and the hand with all
industries, and the heart with all gen.
erosities, and yet
A dart strike through the liver
Let Christian people avoid the mis-
take that they are all wrong with God be-
cause they suffer from depression Of
found his spiritual sky befogged, aud his
] hope of Heaven blotted out, and himself
! plunged chin deep in the Slough Of De-
I spond, and has said: t4My heart is not
right with God, and ] think / must have
made a mistake, and instead Of being a
child Of light am child Of darkness. No
one can feel as gloomy as / feel aud be a
Christian" And he has gone 70 his min
Ister for consolation, and he has collected
Flaveps books, and read and read and
/ read, and prayed and prayed and prayed,
and wept and wept and wept, and groansd
and groaned and groaned
by brother, your trouble is not with the
heart, it is a gastric disorder or q rebel
ion Of the liver. You need a physician
more than you do clergyman. II is not
sin that biots out your hope Of
Heaven, but bile. Et not only
yellows your syebali, and furs youE
tongue, and makes your head ache, but
( svoops upon your soul Ia objections and
forebodings. The devil II after you. lie
has failed 20 deapoil your character, and
be does the next best thing for him-ha
rufaes vour peace Of mind. When he says
that you are not a forgiven SOUL when he
says that you are not right with God
when be says that you viii never get e
Heaven, be lies. You are Just na sure oi
Heaven as though you were there already,
Bus Satan, finding that be can not keel
yoa out Of fhe promised land Of Canaan
has determined that the spies shall mol
bring you any of the Eschol grapes BE-
forehaud, and that you shall have nothing
but prickiy pear and crab-apple. Not
are Just as good now under the cloud 81
vou were when you were accustonsd Z
rfae IN tbs morning ~ Eve o'clock 70 pra1
ard sing. "Hngisiujah. 'tis done" Ms
friend, Rsv. Dr. Joseph r jones' d
Phnadafphia, a translated spirit now
wrote . book em&Ifleds ssAaBs Nora
aud Physical "a which be shows hos
s4aerwme thr snna thinaa may np
LIZ. .-a-...la la. nan.n